


In Our Bedroom After the War

by Meatball42



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Gen, Mental Health Issues, Multi, Personal Hygiene, Psychic Abilities, Recovery, Touch-Starved
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-04
Updated: 2016-07-05
Packaged: 2018-07-20 00:24:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,238
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7383526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Meatball42/pseuds/Meatball42
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They’ve won the battle, but now Finn, Rey, and Poe must fight their own demons. Luckily, they don’t have to fight alone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [flipflop_diva](https://archiveofourown.org/users/flipflop_diva/gifts).



It makes sense, when Finn wakes up, to fight.

Well, not to _fight_ , he isn’t brain dead, but to try and run, and (as he’s learned recently) running involves a lot of fighting. So he knocks over a few medical droids, steals a sharp piece of tubing, and makes it nearly to the exterior of the rebel’s base before a prick in his side has the walls swirling and pressing in on him.

Finn’s last thought is that Rey will miss him.

~ ~ * ~ ~

When Finn wakes up again he’s tied down, thick straps at his wrists and ankles, over his hips and chest. His surprise isn’t in the restraints; it’s in the waking up.

That’s when he realizes that the rebels aren’t going to kill him, and he calls himself stupid in every language he knows. Of course they won’t kill him.

They’re going to torture him for information, and then kill him.

Finn wonders how they’re going to do it. He’s seen a lot of torture, and he wonders after the methods they’ll use on him. Will they go harder on him, since he told them he was in Sanitation and cleaned up during or after interrogations? Since he knows what to expect?

His breathing has quickened. He doesn’t notice, until the door opens and the empty white room is suddenly filled with warmth and hope and- and-

Finn squeezes his eyes shut against the vision that is Poe, standing over the cot. He doesn’t think he could stand it if Poe were the one sent to interrogate him.

“Finn, buddy, are you alright?”

Finn blinks. Poe is ripping the straps off his arms and body, rubbing feeling back into his wrists. He looks, and sounds, concerned. Caring. Finn shudders involuntarily, uncertain if he can trust- but, it’s _Poe_. That matters.

Poe helps him sit up, hands firm but gentle, and it solidifies something in Finn’s mind, a surety he’s never felt before. Poe is _safe_.

“You panicked everyone, coming out of the coma and running around the base like that,” Poe tells him. He’s still holding Finn’s hand, squeezing gently, and it’s making rivulets of warmth run up Finn’s arm and pool in his chest. “I thought… did you think you were back with the First Order? That you’d been caught?”

He had been caught, that was the thing. But it wasn’t by the First Order. Finn nods.

Poe squeezes his hand tighter. His eyes are sorrowful. “You’re safe here, I promise.”

If Poe says it… Finn smiles, shakily, relief finding its way through anxiety. “Thanks.”

Poe lets go of his hand. It feels cold, now. Then he claps his hands, and starts speaking in a more normal tone. “And, good news is, you freaked everyone out enough that they agreed to let you room with me. So thanks for that, ‘cause otherwise they’d fill the space with some green pilot out of the Mid-Ring, and that’s like teaching a child how to walk in artificial gravity. You and me, Finn, it’s going to be great.”

He reaches out and squeezes Finn’s shoulder, and all the tension slips away again. It feels like a drug, acting on pain. For a second Finn is terrified that they finally made a drug to control thoughts, the way his superiors were always hinting. But Poe is smiling at him, so… everything is good.

Finn smiles back, suppressing the tremor squirming its way under the skin of his back. “Going to be great.”


	2. Chapter 2

A hail from the Millennium Falcon reaches the base a few days after Poe gets his new roommate. Finn has spent those days at rehab and sleeping. When he’s awake, he eats, and stares out the window, and eats some more. He doesn’t leave the room. He only eats out of the replicator, even when Poe offers him food from the commissary.

It would be concerning, but to be honest, it’s the least of the misbehaviour Poe has seen from soldiers coming off bad missions. Back in Starfleet, a woman in the barracks next door to Poe’s had set her uniforms on fire due to combat stress. After what Finn’s been through, a panic attack and a bit of lethargy is practically standard fare. Poe’s sure he’ll bounce back in a few days, especially when he hears that Rey is returning.

Finn does, in fact, buck up when Poe passes on the news. Poe convinces Finn to eat a bit of pastry from the commissary ‘in celebration,’ but he has to say goodnight before he can get Finn to talk much. His head is aching, and the throbbing behind his eyes that never seems to go away lately is at full force. Finn is staring out the window, silent, when Poe drifts off.

The next morning, once he’s dragged himself out of bed, Poe forces himself to clean up extra well, and when he meets Rey for the first time, he’s glad he did. He sees a quiet strength in her that reminds him of one of his superiors in Starfleet; of his godmother back home on Yavin 4; of General Organa. When she says she’ll live wherever Finn is living, Poe accepts it after only a momentary hesitation, because arguing against Rey would clearly mean losing Finn, and… that’s not something Poe can live with, right now. He doesn’t examine why.

Poe’s small suite doesn’t really have room for three, but they convert the living room into a bedroom and make it work. It’s cramped, but Poe’s lived in barracks, so he tells himself that this is nothing.

It’s not nothing.

The troubles start on that first day: when Rey seems ready to follow Finn’s lead and eat purely from the replicator, Poe’s weak protests about nutrition find fertile ground. Rey looks at him with those sharp eyes, confused yet curious, and follows him to the commissary. Finn hasn’t made it there yet, and Poe would have invited him tonight, but he’s napping again, curled up with his back to the wall.

Rey samples everything the commissary has, and then goes through it all again. Her grin is so wide, her quiet moans so approving, that the kitchen staff quickly pick up what Poe is just realizing about Rey’s life experience. When Poe brings her back for dinner the next night and every night after, she is greeted with kind smiles, extra portions, and the occasional off-menu treat.

Poe doesn’t mind showing Rey around the station. She’s smart and witty, willing to help with odd jobs and stubborn against the difficulties of base life. Several quadrants would be glad to have her join up with them, since she’s quick to pick things up and not afraid to get her hands dirty. In fact, the problem with Rey is that she’s _too_ willing to get dirty.

Poe sits next to her every evening and picks at his food, trying to sum up an appetite through the nausea. Most of it comes from his headaches, which, while improving with the standard mental stabilizing shots, are still terrible. The rest of it, to be quite honest, comes from Rey.

If Finn is suspicious of food that doesn’t come from a replicator, and of the occasional being besides Poe, Rey, or medical droids who try to talk to him, he’s got nothing on Rey’s reaction to showers.

Poe had waited a few days after Rey’s arrival before mentioning, off-handedly, that she’s perfectly welcome to use the shower in their quarters, he and Finn won’t bother her at all. It’s the first time Poe’s seen her scowl at something besides Finn’s injuries. “Thanks, but I’m fine with the shower on the Falcon,” she says, and goes back to reading a holo with lots of engine schematics.

The shower on the Millennium Falcon is a sonic shower, standard for a space-faring craft. The low-impact vibrations are perfectly capable of removing dirt, blood, and the like, but they don’t work as well on scent as normal showers do.

To Poe’s nose, it’s been a while since Rey took a normal shower. But he’s not going to be the one to pressure a woman to shower where she’s not comfortable, so he’s going to let it go, until Rey continues, “I can’t imagine wasting that much water.”

Over dinner, they have a long discussion about planetary climate, weather patterns, water pollution, and purification and reclamation. At the end of dinner, Poe can barely see through the pounding behind his eyes, and Rey says she’ll consider it.

It’s about as much progress as Poe’s made on any front recently. With his continued medical distress, he’s been side-lined from his own operations, and instead sectioned to supervisory roles and logistical planning. Poe’s not in this fight for the spotlight, and he’s good at seeing the big picture, but it never gets easier to liaise for Jessika over long-range contact as she flies his missions, or to perform damage inspections on crafts that he’s not allowed to fly. Since the destruction of the Starkiller, intel has been pouring in from new sources, but Poe can’t even read it for very long until the headache flares up again.

His workload, overall, has been reduced, which Poe suspects is less in deference to his medical needs than the fact that two assets have been placed in his care. While Rey has Luke Skywalker for her training, it’s not lost on Poe that his unofficial duty is to make Rey comfortable in her new life. The same goes for Finn, who has proven himself to the Resistance and deserves the same care as any of their soldiers. Trying to keep up with the various issues the pair have is mostly what’s running Poe ragged.

He tried one time to get them to accompany him to the mind healers, but Finn nearly broke the doorframe with the force of his protest, and Rey calmly told Poe that she’d kill herself before letting them touch her.

Poe hasn’t brought it up again.

It’s been a few weeks since Rey returned, and a few days longer than that since Finn woke up, and Finn still hasn’t left their room for anything beyond his rehab appointments. He’s nothing like the curious and optimistic man who rescued Poe from the First Order, or the determined fighter who helped take down the Starkiller. There was life in him then, a drive and a spark that Poe’s never seen in any Stormtrooper they’ve captured from questioning. Those men and women (mostly men, and all human, which just reeked of the Empire) were little more than fleshed-out robots. They defended the First Order with the extreme dedication of brain-washing, in passionate denial of any wrong-doing. Finn doesn’t even have that level of energy, now, except when he has nightmares.

Lately, Poe’s dreams are silent, dark. They’re not even dreams so much as his headaches making their way into his sleep. The pressure, the agony, getting greater and greater, but he always wakes up with a quiet gasp before he breaks.

Rey’s nightmares cause objects to fly around the living room, out of the control of her developing Force abilities. She screams when she wakes up, when Finn calls her name, and when her desperate gasps have calmed down, he tries to hug her. Rey is the only one Finn tries to touch, and the only one whose touch he allows, but at night Rey pushes him away, lashes out if he touches her unexpectedly. It hurts Finn, and he retreats to their room while Poe lets Rey tell him about her dreams, usually in very few words, with lots of strained silence in between.

When Finn dreams, he growls in his sleep and wakes up angry. He paces their room like a caged animal. Poe has learned to stay in bed, pretend he’s asleep, if possible. If he tries to speak to him, Finn gets angrier.

One night, when Poe tries to calm him down, Finn storms out of the bedroom, waking Rey when he slams the door. Rey gets up and asks him what’s wrong, and Finn whips around like she’s a threat and snarls at her.

It’s just about enough. Night terrors, Poe can handle, but if Finn is a danger to Rey...

Rey stands up straight and tells Finn to back off, in as good of a commander voice as Poe’s even used on any of his soldiers.

Poe watches in shock and concern as Finn does just that. He falls into a formal stance with his hands at his sides, face blank. And waits.

They both try to talk to him, but Finn only responds to orders from Rey. Poe wants to go fetch a medical droid, or better yet a psych-sensitive healer, but Rey vetoes that option firmly. There’s enough Force behind her words that Poe stays, afraid for himself for the first time since Starkiller. Eventually, Rey orders Finn to sleep, and he slumps over on her bed like someone turned the lights off in his head.

Rey is just staring into the air. She doesn’t so much as twitch when Poe calls her name, or waves a hand in front of her face, or touches her elbow gently. Wary, Poe makes her a hot cocoa. There’s something delicate about her just now, so odd on her normally steadfast bearing, that makes him want to comfort her, even though her command has set his head to pounding once again.

The cocoa is a good call. The scent seems to raise Rey from her trance, and after a quiet whimper on her first sip, Rey sits down on the foot of her bed and savors every drop. Poe’s been saving the cocoa for a special occasion, but it’s worth it when Rey closes her eyes and lets her head fall back against the wall with a happy sigh.

“I can bring him back to our room,” Poe offers. He’s nearly whispering, even that much noise making his headache.

Rey manages a weak smile. “It’s nearly morning.”

The sky outside is a few shades lighter, meaning there’s less than an hour til the first bell. Poe nods and goes back to sleep.


	3. Chapter 3

After her first round of debriefings, Jessika finds Poe in the cramped, windowless ‘research room’ at the back of the pilot’s lounge. The lights are low and he’s on his back on the worn old sofa, so one could assume he’s there for a quick nap. Jessika knows better.

“Tired of sharing a room like the rest of us?” she jibes lightly, turning the room’s chair away from the sofa and sitting backwards on it. “Newbie flying you up the wall?”

Poe’s eyes open slowly. “First time in the mess hall, today. He attacked someone at lunch. Thought they were trying to assassinate him.”

“Wow. Paranoia? He doesn’t really think the First Order can get to him here, does he?”

“No, he thought the guy was doing it for us. ‘Why else would he have touched me?’ he said.” Poe turns onto his side on the couch, pillowing his head on one arm. He’s moving slow, like it hurts. Jessika pretends not to notice.

“Could be a lot of things,” she says casually. “Obviously trust issues, he’s probably been blasted with propaganda his whole life. Some weird touch sensitivity thing after all that mucking about with the Force?”

“I don’t know,” Poe mumbles, eyes sliding shut again.

Jessika waits, but he doesn’t open them. “You still tired?” she asks softly.

Poe nods slightly. Jessika gets up and nudges his hip until she can sit on the couch beside him. His eyes don’t open as she gently runs her fingers through his hair.

The deep bruises left on Poe’s psyche from Kylo Ren’s attack are healing, but slowly. Jessika closes her eyes as she inspects them and presses gently at their edges. She breathes in the familiar pattern of meditation, and with each exhalation she lays down a thin layer of warmth and healing.

Poe’s body relaxes into the couch as she works, until he’s little more than a puddle when she finally comes back to herself. He’s even smiling. It just makes the circles under his eyes look more pronounced.

“Still having nightmares?” Jessika murmurs. She leaves her hand in his hair, rubbing at his scalp.

“Finn’s are worse.” Poe’s voice rumbles in his chest, like a dog growling. Jess scratches behind his ear.

“At least he’s got someone to help tire him out, right?” she teases.

Poe frowns. “They’re not like that.”

“Come on, the way they acted since they got here? Fine, then, you hooked up with one of them? From what I saw they’re both pretty shiny.”

Poe doesn’t even react.

Jessika stops touching his hair and let her hand slide down to the center of his chest. “Let me see?” she asks.

Poe’s eyes open wide in surprise. While Jessika is psych-sensitive, she doesn’t tend to use her abilities very often outside of her field medical training. She holds his gaze. “You shouldn’t be this run down. It’s been a month since the battle.”

“Has it?” he murmurs.

Jessika blinks. “Okay, that’s it. Let me see,” she says firmly.

Poe hesitates, then nods.

Jessika gently presses at Poe’s psychic walls and nearly falls right into his emotional center. His defenses are thin and weak, and inside he’s tender and hurt. Healing from Kylo Ren’s torture should have been difficult, but this looks like none of the standard healing treatments Poe’s received have done a thing. And there are new bruises on his psyche, exhaustion and fear and failure. Lost hope.

Jessika lays down a layer of comfort and healing before she pulls back and hugs her friend tightly. “You idiot, what have you been getting up to?”

Poe hugs her back. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. I’ve been safe on base, you’re the one tearing around the constellations.”

“I think you might have been in more danger,” Jessika says quietly. “Where are Rey and Finn?”

“Probably back in our room. It’s late, isn’t it?”

Jessika sighs. “It’s very late.”

~ ~ * ~ ~

When they arrive at Poe’s room, newly home to two refugees, Jessika can feel the emanations from the hallway. “You realize you’ve given me a job and a half, Dameron.”

Poe looks at her, hopeful and more desperate than she’s ever seen him. “You can help?”

Jessika wants to hug him again, but there’s work to do. “I’ll help,” she promises.

Poe unlocks the door with a wave of his hand and they step inside. Finn is sitting on the chair new the window, staring outside. Rey is curled up on her bed reading a scroll.

Jessika blinks and opens her mind, and the real scene becomes apparent. Depression is so heavy in Finn's corner, in a dense cloud around him, that if it existed in the physical world it would weigh him down like thick mud. Heavy shackles weigh Finn down, trailing to Poe and to Rey and into the ether. The shadow of a uniform lays over his skin and his spirit hangs low with fear.

On the outside, Rey looks sturdy and serene, the way she was the only time Jessika has seen her. She’d been straight from the thick of the fighting, then, and looked just as put-together. Underneath it all, in Jessika’s other vision, Rey is twitching, instincts jumping from Finn to Poe to the newcomer in their space, clutching at the scroll in her hands, shying away from her Resistance-issued clothes.

Rey in Jessika's vision flinches with the urge to sit up, go to Finn, in case the stranger is trouble. The Force swirls around her in untidy waves, pressing and pulling at Finn; she’s trying to pull him closer, but she recognizes his fear of touch, and in the end she does nothing. At Jessika’s side, Poe wobbles as a wave of Force-strengthened distress barrels into him, sending his weak shields aflutter.

No wonder Poe hasn’t gotten any better. No wonder none of them have.

To Jessika’s surprise, both Rey and Finn react to her psychic appraisal, their energy flaring at the touch of hers. Rey sits up straight, and the Force spins more tightly around her, massing in readiness.

“I’m not a healer, I’m a friend of Poe’s,” Jessika announces. “And if you want to keep living with him, you’re going to do what I tell you,” she commands.

Poe’s protective instincts flare forest green beside her, but he’s so weak right now, it almost hurts to look at him. He knows that that the three of them need help right now, and he trusts Jessika. Trust feels good in the psychic realm, firm and silver.

Finn’s response is a sickly orange and liquid. His energy submits to the commanding wave she put out, though defiance colors it sapphire. He doesn’t want to lose Poe, and he’s afraid.

Rey is not afraid, but she wobbles in the face of Jessika’s psychic presence. She looks at Poe, pale beside Jessika, and Finn, expressionless in the chair where he’s spent much of the last few weeks, and nods in acquiescence.

“Poe, go get food. Something nutritious. Finn, when he gets back, you’re going to eat it, no argument.”

Finn’s jaw clenches, but he submits in a practiced and unemotional way. Jessika shivers. They’re going to work on that, but first things first.

“Both of you are going outside, find somewhere to sit in the sun. Rey, go in the bathroom and brush your hair.”

Poe leaves. Finn looks out the window. Rey goes to brush her hair.

Jessika closes her eyes and opens them at a deeper level. Debris is scattered around the small apartment, splashes of fear and heavy blocks of pain, shatters of nightmares. The air is heavy with debt and hope and the feeling of being trapped. Jessika reaches past Finn to open the window and concentrates on shifting the congealed emotions that are polluting the living space. She puts a little more effort into the depression clinging to his skin, like river sludge piling up and smothering a small tree.

Poe returns once Jessika has lightened the air a little. He’s carrying a basket and grabs a blanket from his bed before heading back to the door. It looks like he intends to make their therapy trip a picnic, which just shows how awesome Jessika is, that her healing is starting to beat back his exhausted helplessness already.

When they leave, Finn takes Poe’s hand. Jessika pats herself on the back.

She knocks on the door of the bathroom and Rey lets her in. The younger woman is brushing her hair in the small mirror, and Jessika meets her eyes in their reflection. “I’m going to teach you how to use a water shower, and you’re not going to owe me anything.”

Rey’s mouth drops open.

“Here’s how it works,” Jessika says briskly. “When people are strangers or unfriendly, interactions are one-offs, and have to be equal. You do this for me, I do this for you, exchange. Because there’s no reason to trust them, or expectations for the future. When you’re friends, there’s the assumption of a longer relationship. You ever been in debt?”

Rey nods.

“In a friendship, you can accumulate debt, or credit, and there’s no expectation of payback. Because you can trust a friend not to take advantage, and you can expect them to help you in the future even without a specific trade. You see what I mean?”

“A line of credit,” Rey says uncertainly.

Jessika nods. “I’m going to be your friend, so when I help you out, you don’t have to give me anything. That’s what Poe’s been thinking too, you know. You don’t owe him anything either.”

Rey looks confused, but shrugs. “Sounds difficult.”

Jessika laughs. “Yeah. Well. You get used to it.”

She takes the brush from Rey and shows her how to turn on the wetwash, along with a few basic instructions about how scrubbing down with water is different from sonic showers. Once Rey finishes with that, Jessika passes a bottle of hair soap around the curtain and walks Rey through making bubbles. Afterwards, she fetches a towel and retreats to the main room.

Rey emerges from the bathroom some minutes later, holding the towel around her body with both hands. Jessika shows her briskly how to tuck it so it won’t fall, then sits the damp woman down on the couch.

“Living here is different to where you came from,” Jessika starts. This talk, at least, is one she’s had to give before. Recruits come from many different systems, for many different reasons, but a lot of the wanderers of the galaxy have these issues in common. “I can’t promise anything about other settlements, but here, the only punishment you'll receive is if you hurt someone else. If you don’t want to use the water shower, your roommates might not be happy with you, but that’s the end of it. There’ll be no consequences for eating too much, sleeping too much. If there’s somewhere you’re not allowed to go, it’s labelled. Something you’re not allowed to do, you’ll be informed. If you have any questions, ask, any needs, we’ll do our best to meet them. The Resistance is an army, but we’re fighting for freedom and justice, and we start in our own ranks.”

Rey’s perceptive eyes take in every nuance of Jessika’s face and body language. This, too, Jessika is used to, and she lets her faith and honesty show. Less familiar is the uneven pressure of Rey’s curious probing with the Force, but Jessika lets that ride. Rey is new to this.

“I’m not a healer, and I think you could use one. But if you don’t want that, then I’ll help you. Not so that you’ll owe me, but because that’s the right thing to do.”

Rey’s Force constricts Jessika, searching, and Jessika pushes it back calmly. Rey looks stunned for an instant, then thoughtful. Jessika waits.

Eventually, Rey nods. Nerves tingle in the air around her, but she agrees to let Jessika begin healing her. “And Finn?” she asks, chin rising just a hair in defiance. Protective is a deep purple haze on Rey, Jessika learns.

“If he’ll let me.” Jessika reaches out and Rey stares at her hand. After a moment, she takes it.

“This is called a handshake,” Jessika explains, performing the gesture. “In a lot of human colonies and those that have mixed with humans, it’s what you do when you meet. Touching from the hand to the shoulder is the most acceptable contact for strangers, though still, usually, you wait til you get to know someone first. I’m Jessika Pava, by the way,” she says, letting go. “Poe’s told me a lot about you.”

“I’m Rey,” Rey replies. She already looks interested, more awake and happy than before, even tired and with wet hair dripping down her back.

Jessika’s not afraid for this one, not at all.


	4. Chapter 4

The late afternoon sun is shining through their window. It's a deep goldenrod, which for this moon is dark, but would be around watering time back on Jaku. It's tough for Rey to get used to. In the meantime, though, she has other things to distract her.

They’ve pulled all the blankets and sheets and pillows in the apartment and piled them between Rey’s bed and the table, making a nest not unlike her nest back on Jaku. Rey fetched liquid gold from the commissary earlier, and she and Poe are taking turns feeding it to Finn, who has his head on Poe’s lap and Rey’s legs flopped over his body. The sweet, stringy fruit is very sticky, so she only touches it with her right hand, and the other is free to stroke down Finn’s side. Poe does the same: he's touching Finn’s head and neck gently so that Finn’s semi-permanent frown is just a memory.

The windows are open, but for once it doesn’t make Rey feel exposed and alien. The air here is so humid that half the time it’s like living in a steam-filled garage. But Jessika told Rey that staying indoors all the time, not breathing fresh air at least sometimes, has a bad affect on mental and physical health, so, fresh air it is. Rey breathes in deep, and tries to accept the scent of green things as normal. It’s getting easier every day.

Across Finn’s body Poe sighs, mirroring her. He’s got a glazed look on his face. Rey squints and focuses the way Jessika taught her, and sees a faint fog of pink billowing around the room. It’s coming from her.

“Sorry, that’s me,” she admits. “Should I stop?”

Poe grins freely. “Not for my sake.”

Finn moans a little ‘uh-uh’, too relaxed to summon words. Rey tickles at his side, laughing when his nose twitches and he bats weakly at her, finally catching her hand.

A yearning grows in Rey’s chest and she squeezes Finn’s hand tighter. Since Poe had brought Jessika to see them, Rey has gotten a lot better about touching people. Before she’d met Finn, Rey couldn’t stand anyone touching her. But Finn’s deep need for contact, once he knows it’s safe, encouraged Rey to try, and now touching Finn or Poe releases something inside her, even as it brings something else closer to the surface.

As though he can sense her thoughts, Poe takes Rey’s sticky hand with his and winds their fingers together. She smiles at him, and his dark, intent eyes call her until she’s leaning over Finn’s body. Their breath mingles in the silence, and then his lips are on hers.

It’s unlike anything else. The sensation is stupendous, such gentle softness on such vulnerable skin, but feeling his eyelashes on hers and hearing the way his breath trembles… Rey’s hand in Finn’s tightens outside of her control, and it’s squeezed back nearly hard enough to hurt.

She glances down at Finn, and Poe does the same. Their foreheads rest together as they look into Finn’s eyes, wide and practically glowing. On instinct, Rey squints, and sees colorful ribbons twisting around the three of them, radiant in the rays of sun through the window, and, in this moment, without a hint of the anxious shivers or desolate stormclouds Rey has seen in the last few weeks.

She leans down to brush her lips against Finn’s. He lets go of her hand to touch his hair. They kiss harder Rey and feels a wetness on his lips. She flinches back, breathing hard. On Finn’s shoulder, Poe’s hand is shaking, and he meets Rey’s gaze overwhelmed, but so happy. He can’t contort to kiss Finn in this position and none of them particularly want to move, but he strokes Finn’s cheek tenderly, and they look at each other as softly as Rey has ever seen anyone.

There’s a sound, or something, in one of the senses Rey doesn’t have a word for yet. She whips her head around to the door and focuses. Retreating quietly is a pink-and-orange smug streak in the air that could only have been Jessika.

“Everything alright?” Poe asks.

Rey looks down at her first friend, and up and the man who gave them a home. “Everything is wonderful,” she says sincerely.

Finn smiles. Poe takes Rey’s hand again. Everything is wonderful.


End file.
